The Rise of Rwanda's Women

Rebuilding and Reuniting a Nation

Author: Swanee Hunt
May/June 2014
Foreign Affairs

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Twenty years ago, in 100 days of slaughter between April and July 1994, an estimated one million Rwandan men, women, and children were killed by their fellow citizens. It was one of the worst genocides in history, and its effects still ripple through Rwanda, central and eastern Africa, and the world at large.

It would be obscene to say that such a catastrophe has had even the thinnest silver lining. But it did create a natural -- or unnatural -- experiment, as the country's social, economic, and political institutions were wiped out by the genocide.